I agree with everything above other than it being a hard decision.David wrote:... I'm sure it was a hard decision to make an exception to two of the founding principles of the bundle, and alienate some of the original bundle supporters, but it would have been a mistake to pass up such an important opportunity ...
Volition does most of their shit. The guys I know work at volition.Incolta wrote:... Also the dick part of my brain wants to point out that THQ is more of a publisher than a developer
About 6 or so years ago, I may have been on the other side of this debate.MOM4Evr wrote:... The tl;dr version would have to be: "Ohman, a different Humble Bundle? I hate difference! Difference bad! Me no like difference!" http://youtu.be/5OB8EYKXAys?t=9m7s
Because, Ironically, 6 or 7 years ago I was talking about Volition/THQ's decisions.
I was a huge Red Faction fanatic, released a handful of maps, several dozen that never were released and made quite a few maps and models in this Red Faction mod for UT2k4.
I remember practically frothing at the mouth when Red Faction: Guerrilla came out saying that the changes they were making to the red faction franchise. However, I was wrong. They were simply trying to adapt to what they thought the majority audience would want to sell their game, not cater to a small niche of extremely enthusiastic gamers. I was too close to the issue and felt personally betrayed, not that I would of admitted it.
This same thing happened on a larger scale to the apple community as they transferred from the smaller niche crowd to the globally popular technology goliath that it is today.
This is going to happen to Wolfire/HBI at some point in the future or they will go bankrupt.
You can never have too much profit as a company. I used to hate companies for this but now its just like "Hey, that's kinda what they set out to do in the first place.".Kame wrote:Helps fund the Humble Store and other indie services (The millions of dollars they've gotten from their other bundles wasn't enough for that?)
Oh god, could you imagine what that would mean if THQ basically managed to stay solvent because of the indie bundle? It would imply that the entire financial strategy of charging $40 a pop for games isn't economical aka, more volume vs price is more profitable. (not that they will stay solvent.)Kame wrote:Could help THQ out of a rough spot.
I definitely wouldn't say that. THQ is undermining their own future by selling their games dirt cheap because they do not believe they have a future.Kame wrote:Helps prove that pay-what-you-want can work with big-budget games (helps prove that people don't really care if something is DRM free or not)
I think the majority don't care so long as they don't see it disrupt their gameplay. It's when you see shit like the Assassins creed II drm (I believe that is the correct game.) where people who legitimately bought the game are struggling to play it and the people who pirated the game have already been playing it for a week.Kame wrote:Proves people don't care about DRM
Linux is a very small market. The effort of developing for that market is usually more tedious than the reward of being able to cater to that market. If you fix that issue you will see more games for linux.Kame wrote:Proves people don't care about cross platform
HBI is backed by some pretty fucking smart people. I sometimes envy how business savy they are. They know they don't have the budget to produce triple AAA games and back it with a huge marketing budget. So they basically generate as much attention as possible through other means. Some not even associated to their product. Their whole marketing strategy is essentially screaming "HEY LOOOK AT MEEEEEEE! IM OVER HERE! HEEEEEY!" in a sea of people.Kame wrote:Proves HBI will completely sell out whatever their original intent was for money
I was once arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that all you needed to be successful is to simply produce an awesome game and people would spread it around via word of mouth. That simply doesn't happen. Your audience will not do the marketing aspect for you.
The only unfortunate thing is although their marketing is strong, their game is relative weak in terms of being easily presentable to a large audience. (sorry to say guys, I basically preordered overgrowth just to check out the engine.)
It's basically an open world button masher featuring anthropomorphic rabbits, wolves, and cats. That's a weird game to sell to a large audience.
Tl;Dr: I've ranted too much. I'm gonna go play Saints Row III now.